Towards the end of 1932, The United States was experiencing the most catastrophic economic crisis of the 20th century. Naturally, the last thing on everyone’s minds was spending money. Everyone except for multibillionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr. who had a multimillion dollar idea.

I was sitting in my car on the way home from work the other day, stuck in traffic, bored out of my mind. I was thinking to myself, I could fly past all these cars and be home in 15 minutes if everyone just moved to the side of the road. An unoriginal notion, I’m sure. Alas, I was stopped at a traffic light, unable to move. Then I thought, how strange it is that everyone accepts the authority of a traffic light, and that thought made me wonder how that came to be (hey, better than thinking about the traffic itself). As it turns out, its origin had a dim start.Continue reading “Red Light! Green Light! Traffic Signals!”→